Chapter Text
Meanwhile Bruce and Natka had finished Clint's feet. Clint lay boneless and ecstatic on the couch. Betty perched herself on the arm of the couch behind Bruce. She reached forward and used her toes to tickle the back of Clint's knees.
"Eh," he protested as he bent his knees to protect the sensitive spots. He opened one eye to glare at her. Phil wondered whether Betty had learned that trick from Bruce, or vice versa.
"Hey Clint, check this out," Betty said. Clint opened his eyes, because it was his nature to watch things. Betty reached forward and settled her hands on either side of Bruce's neck. "There are these two spots just above his shoulderblades, and if you squeeze here --" She demonstrated. Bruce melted instantly. "-- then he goes goosh just like that. He stores tension in his shoulders, you know, the way he curls in on himself while working. So that's how to let it out." Betty tugged Bruce backwards into her lap. He let her arrange him as she wished.
"Cool," Clint said.
Maybe more of the team could feed their skin-hunger this way, if they pick up the same techniques, Phil mused. God knows some of them need it, whether they want to admit it or not.
"Hm." Natka made a thoughtful noise. She shifted her position to scrunch onto the couch at Clint's waist. Then she tugged one of Bruce's feet onto her knee, placing the other one in Clint's lap. "See if you learned enough to return the favor, selfish pig," she said to Clint.
"So not paying attention," Clint said.
"Follow me," Natka said. And Clint did, because he always could and always would, whatever she asked of him. They moved as if one body with four hands, in perfect synchrony born from years of practice, even their breath falling into the same rhythm without thought. Their hands worked smoothly over Bruce's feet. It was beautiful to watch as they applied old skills to a new purpose.
"Be careful with his feet," Betty warned. "He's ticklish, so you need to use firm pressure with your whole hands, not just your fingertips. He'll kick you in the face if you get careless and tickle him." She kneaded Bruce's shoulders, keeping him relaxed enough to buy them time for the extra coaching.
"Is he supposed to be this quiet?" Natka asked, frowning a little. Her hands went still. "Clint made more noise."
"Bruce is very subtle," Betty told them. "You'll need all your observational skills to read him with any accuracy."
Bruce flinched minutely at her words.
Phil straightened his back and said, "Mind that you don't overload him." He knew that being watched comprised one of Bruce's major issues. Phil couldn't blame him for that particular fear, though. For Bruce, observation tended to connect with such unfortunate things as pursuit, imprisonment, and torture. He had very little in the way of counter-examples except for Betty and, now, the Avengers.
"I know his limits," Betty said. Bruce stirred in her grasp. Betty lifted one finger to tap him over the collarbone. "Quit that. Lie still and let us take care of you now. You deserve to get pampered sometimes instead of prioritizing everyone else's needs over your own. So either you give us some vocal feedback for this, or you let us read silently. You pick."
Bruce grumbled, fidgeting against the couch. His hands gripped the cushion beneath him. Phil could see the tension coiling through his body, the twitch of thigh muscles as Bruce contemplated taking his feet back.
"Shh," Clint said. He stroked his thumbs firmly across the tips of Bruce's toes. "Listen to me, Bruce. You trust my eyes in combat. Trust them now. Anything I see, I'll use it only for your benefit. I'll never turn it against you, not of my own free will."
Phil heard that caveat and wondered if it would spook Bruce clean out of contact. The man looked so broken open by Clint's speech that Phil worried they might have gone too far. The raw expression plucked at Phil's sympathy.
There was a quiet strength in Bruce, though, that came out at the most unexpected moments. "Okay," he said, his voice shaky but his consent clear. "Go ahead." Bruce gave Clint the same level of faith that he had requested of the archer earlier. He let go of the couch, turning both palms up. Then he curled each hand into a complicated shape, forefinger tucked tightly under the base of the thumb, tip of the thumb touching the side of the pinky finger, middle two still extended.
Betty made a satisfied noise. From this Phil extrapolated that she knew some kind of hidden meaning behind the gesture, and he hoped to coax it out of her later. As he watched, her hands worked their way up the sides of Bruce's neck until his head rested in her grasp. His eyes closed. He melted into the couch, completely limp and trusting.
Natka resumed her work on Bruce's feet. Clint's hands followed her every motion, but his eyes were all for Bruce, filled with the far look that the archer used for meticulous examination of something close as if it were a vast distant landscape, a way of expanding the inner space of things much the way that Tony expanded holograms. Phil paid close attention, and managed to catch the tiny shift when Clint went from following to leading. Clint worked both thumbs up and down the big toe.
Bruce made a very faint hum of approval.
Betty's head came up, clearly surprised. She grinned and nodded vigorously for Clint to continue. Natka picked up the cue and followed suit on the other foot. The hum grew fractionally louder. Clint and Natka grinned back at Betty.
Phil looked over at Tony and Steve to make sure they weren't getting into any kind of trouble. They were still bent over the Concentration upgrade. Phil could hear the faint scritch-scratch of colored pencil on paper as Steve worked. He raised a hand to poke at the floating illustration, frowning at it for some reason.
Tony reached out without seeming to look, pinched an electron between his fingertips, and used it to rotate the whole image into a more convenient orientation. He paused. Then he put it right back the way it was before, and guided Steve's hand into place.
Steve frowned a little more and tried to mimic Tony's elegant sweep of direction. The diagram spun smoothly in place. "Wow," Steve said softly.
"Knew you could do it," Tony said.
Phil looked back and forth between the two groups, both of them cooperating with a fluency that warmed his heart. With so many different flavors of teamwork, he didn't know which made him the proudest. He just knew that, no matter how much he loved his "kids" and admired their skills, they kept finding whole new ways to impress him.
